We’ve seen a lot of science fiction revolving around using personal data to “pay” for goods and services, but one campus coffeeshop is making it science fact. Shiru Cafe on Brown University’s campus uses student’s personal information (including name, age, and college major) as currency, allowing anyone with a university ID to exchange caffeine for the ability for corporate partners to advertise to the customers through not only visual displays, but from the baristas themselves. The information given to advertisers, according to the café owners, does not include any personally identifying factors, but rather comprises of an aggregation of their entire clientele.

California becomes the first state to sign a cybersecurity law specifically focused on smart home devices. Starting on January 1st, 2020, smart home device manufacturers must equip their devices with reasonable security measures to protect consumers from unauthorized modification, access, and information disclosure. “If it can be accessed outside a local area network with a password, it needs to either come with a unique password for each device, or force users to set their own password the first time they connect,” which would slow down the ability of hackers to use default usernames/passwords to gain access to devices remotely.

Hydro-and-aquaponics systems are becoming increasingly common features in high-end restaurants in New York City. But they’re also popping up in unexpected places, including the cafeteria of a Manhattan high school. “As part of a nonprofit program called Teens for Food Justice, a handful of schools in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan have turned spare classrooms, unused science labs, and, in one case, an empty closet into urban hydroponic farms, an experiment in self-sufficiency, science education, and food equity.” I’m excited to see where projects like this go.

With the pace that technology is currently advancing, it is amazing to see how it becomes increasingly woven into our daily lives. The Consumer Electronics Show, now in its 51st year, is the proving grounds for these new advancements. With over 170,000 attendees and 3900 vendors, CES is the world’s largest tradeshow. Over the pastthreeyears, CRT Lab’s has covered the trends that emerge, and what they mean for real estate. This year, we saw the following five key trends.

1) Increased Focus on Air Quality

There is a special marketplace on the show floor within CES that is specifically made for startups and technology pioneers called Eureka Park. This section is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and Techstars, and is a great place to get insights on where technology trends may be headed.

As we began to notice two years ago at the Lab’s first visit to CES, air quality is getting more and more attention of more importance to today’s consumers. In previous years we have met innovative startups like Plume Labs and elichens. This year, having built our own indoor air quality monitor, we were able to meet with and collect samples of the latest innovations directly from the sensor manufacturers.

2) Google Has Arrived

This year Google made its first-ever appearance at CES. They had an especially rocky start with their giant two-story outdoor booth having to be shut down due to heavy rains on day one, and faced power issues midweek.

Despite all this, by perhaps what may be brute-force alone, their presence was felt. Previous years at CES have been absolutely dominated by Amazon’s Voice Assistant Alexa, and for the search giant’s first year ever to be exhibiting – they had incredible product penetration.

Photo by Dieter Bohn / The Verge

From sponsoring the city-wide monorail, buses, taxis, and their incredibly impressive two-story outdoor booth, it seemed like Google was everywhere.

In fact, they even had real life Google Assistants working overtime on the exhibition floor giving product demonstrations, running contests, and doing giveaways of Google Assitant compatible devices.

3) Urban Agriculture

If you’ve visited CRT Labs over the past two years, you’ve most likely seen some of our aquaponics systems. Filled with fish, ghost shrimp, herbs and vegetables, these systems work based on a symbiotic relationship between the aquatic life and the plants growing above. As more and more people are moving to major urban areas, the demand for locally grown produce is only growing higher.

The Grove aquaponics set-up for CRT Labs, with kale above and goldfish in the tank.

This year at CES, there were dozens of companies trying to capture some of that demand by offering consumers a way to grow their own vegetables at home. What is reassuring to us that this will be a future trend to watch is just the sheer number of different approaches companies are taking to solve this problem. We saw sleek, counter-top units like the Aspara Smart Veggie Grower, to full popup greenhouses like the Grow Pods by Opcom.

4) Smart City and Autonomous Vehicles

We saw an incredible amount of technology this year that was trying to marry all of the innovation together to provide solutions for smart cities. Two of the best examples of this would be the Bosch Climo System and Toyota’s e-pallet, both of which won Innovation Awards this year. The Climo System is a smart air monitoring solution designed and developed to evaluate, visualize and act upon the outdoor air quality enabled with real-time tracking of ambient air pollutants. According to their website, the Climo System has eight different sensors that measure particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide. It is also equipped to monitor pollen levels, which is a common cause of allergies. We can’t help but be reminded of the Chicago based project, the Array of Things, which has similar goals.

Toyota announced a new business alliance between partners Amazon, Mazda, Pizza Hut, Uber, and Didi (Chinese Ride Sharing) focusing on what they are calling “Mobility as a Service”. As part of this, they also revealed the first of their concept vehicles, the e-Pallet.

Photo by Antuan Goodwin/Roadshow

The idea being that the e-Pallet would be a completely modular and customizable solution for autonomous transportation needs. From ridesharing and automated delivers, to on-demand retail experiences, the e-Pallet is made to be the starting point for any company who has a use case for electric autonomous vehicles.

5) Voice Control Integration Becomes Deeper

This year at CES we saw the deeper integration of voice assistants into the smart home. The best example of this would be Kohler, who unveiled Kohler Konnect this year. Enabling voice control technology for your shower, bathtub, toilet, mirror, and faucet. While this main seem a bit overkill at first, there are many uses cases for touchless/handsfree operation in the bathroom. In fact, Kohler received a CES 2018 Innovation award for the efforts, in their company’s impressive debut.

What lies ahead in 2018? The team takes our best guesses for the future in our second annual year-in-tech predictions post. As expected, we think blockchain is going to be the hot technology trend of 2018, but we also take a look at smart home tech, smart city (and smart farming) initiatives, and more.

Adrienne:In 2018, we’re going to see more things bought in online marketplaces than offline at retail establishments. More people will be ordering takeout on Grubhub than will be dining in at their favorite restaurants, and other traditional retail establishments will really need to start thinking about their online presence. We’ve been staring this shift in the face for a while, but with Amazon buying up Whole Foods, I think we’re about to see the scales tip in favor on online buying. What does this mean for real estate? I think big purchases are safe for now – nothing can replace the one-on-one service a REALTOR® gives to their clients – but I do expect there to be some larger attempts at “disruption” in that space, whether it be through an uptick in using Bitcoin to pay for a house, or apps connecting buyers and sellers, or something completely new (and no, not robots…I hope).

Akram:
After the first few city-wide implementations of sensors to monitor weather, air quality and traffic (such as the Array of Things in Chicago), we may see similar implementations in various other cities. This may not have immediate impact on public transportation, awareness or health this year, but data collection and analysis may prove to be useful to build on services for the coming years. The housing market may have a steady growth, with more millennials now looking to buy homes, although in some larger cities, renting may prove to be more cost effective. In 2018, there will be a wider implementation of smart home devices as they get more popular, with voice assistants becoming almost human-like in responses, but not necessarily in understanding various dynamics and social constructs in language. More items in the household may have a “smart” feature, such as furniture, doors and appliances such as refrigerators and washers. With an increase in such devices, there will be a need for interoperability, and we may see a development of a standard protocol for most common smart home devices, so they can exchange data between each other. With the increase in devices connected to the internet, encryption and privacy will yet again be a concern. There may be a wide-scale attack on popular IoT devices, leading to a leak in personal lifestyle information, which can be more crucial than just a social security number. We may also see a series of small scale attacks with companies rushing to address bugs. Cryptocurrency can be completely overturned in 2018, with governments cracking down on mining operations and increasing amount of legislations in place to control it. The bitcoin bubble may finally burst, but it may lead to increased awareness of the technology itself. Blockchain applications can see a wider implementation, however, this largely depends on the understanding of the fundamentals of blockchain by individuals and corporations.

Chad:Renewables will continue to heat up as it was recently announced that it is now cheaper to produce energy using solar, wind, hydrothermal and geothermal than fossil fuels. This return to using nature for us to thrive will manifest itself in another way as well. We will see a large growth of biophilic architecture (plants incorporated into building design) as well as urban agriculture. Companies, like Plenty, are receiving large rounds of funding and cities are starting to wise up to the benefits of locally produced food. From more community gardens to the use of hydroculture for indoor growing year round, cities will begin investing this and seeing it as a crucial part of their smart city missions. This will also mean the boon of microfarmers as part of the gig economy. They will be key in this movement.

Dave:
I believe 2018 will be another breakout year for blockchain and digital currencies. More enterprises will enter the pilot stage as others move into production. The number of active blockchain related projects went from 26,000 in 2016 to over 86,000 in 2017*. We should start seeing more of these projects reach maturity. Specifically, in real estate, we will see escrow and title companies leveraging blockchain to help improve the real estate transfer process. *From analysis of public code repositories on Github, an annual report by Deloitte.

Joe:I have two predictions for 2018.2017 was the year net neutrality was repealed; 2018 will be the year in which we feel the effects. And sadly, we’ll feel them sooner than a lot of people think. Some internet service providers have pledged not to throttle or block sites, and not to set up fast lanes. Those pledges will prove to be meaningless, especially as more consumers become cable TV cord cutters. Paid prioritization of web content will be how ISPs try to reclaim the money they’re losing, and it’s going to get very ugly very fast.Unrelated: Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey will leave his perch by the end of Q2.

Last year, we highlighted some great tech gifts to give during the holidays, and broke them down by different price points: under $100, $100-199, and over $200. This year, we decided to do things a little differently, and highlight four categories of smart technology. Three of our guides (coming this week) will focus on beginning, intermediate, and advanced smart home products; and then next week we’ll have a commercial/office tech gift guide. These guides will cover a variety of price ranges, so there’s sure to be a gift for everyone on your list at any price point. Note that we’re using the suggested retail prices; you can search the Internet for better deals, especially during the holidays.

Today, we’re focusing on advanced smart home tech. Are you or your giftee ready to start taking on your own smart home projects? These ideas will help you hit the ground running with some easy DIY creations.

1. littleBits Smart Home Kit, $249. littleBits have been one of my favorite tech products since my days in working with K-6 teachers to integrate tech into their classrooms, and I was thrilled to find out that they make a Smart Home Kit. Designed for “big kids” – and adults – this easy-to-use kit uses snap-together circuits and sensors to create a variety of smart home projects, including an automated cat feeder, a door sensor for your fridge, and more. Programming is done simply with IFTTT commands, letting you also get a great introduction to some of the more advanced features of IFTTT.
2. Kooke Smart Home Sensor Kit, $21.99, and Raspberry Pi 3, $35. This Smart Home kit is a great way to begin creating IoT devices using Raspberry Pi. The kit comes with a temperature sensor, gas sensors, light sensors, and more, and includes web tutorials to get started with Raspberry Pi and Smart Home products. You’ll need to purchase a separate Raspberry Pi for each project, but you’re getting a great value for a variety of sensors! This kit will require a bit more programming knowledge than a kit like littleBits.
3. Lynda.com membership, starting at $19.99/mo. Want to begin to how to create your own Internet of Things projects, mess with a Raspberry Pi, or perhaps pick up a programming language (or two)? A Lynda.com account is a great investment. They have classes in virtually anything and everything, including high level overviews of concepts like Blockchain and hands-on instruction for IoT devices and more. There’s even a 30-day free trial to the site to start! Lynda is a great way to learn about IFTTT and Raspberry Pi hardware and software for the kits above.

If you’re looking to really get into creating your own smart home products, these are a great springboard for many projects. Soon, you’ll be customizing the smart home of your dreams!

Last year, we highlighted some great tech gifts to give during the holidays, and broke them down by different price points: under $100, $100-199, and over $200. This year, we decided to do things a little differently, and highlight four categories of smart technology. Three of our guides (coming this week) will focus on beginning, intermediate, and advanced smart home products; and then next week we’ll have a commercial/office tech gift guide. These guides will cover a variety of price ranges, so there’s sure to be a gift for everyone on your list at any price point. Note that we’re using the suggested retail prices; you can search the Internet for better deals, especially during the holidays.

Today, we’re focusing on intermediate smart home tech. Do you or your giftee have a few smart devices, but want to start integrating them more? This guide is for you!

1. Samsung SmartThings Convenience and Entertainment Bundle, $205. We’re huge fans of the SmartThings hub, which alone retails for $99. A smart hub allows you to control your smart home in a convenient and easy way, cutting out the need for multiple apps for multiple manufacturers and products. The SmartThings hub also offers some great programming options that go beyond simply turning devices on and off, and programming your devices is usually just a few taps in the app. The bundle listed here gives you great bang for your buck and includes two smart bulbs by Sylvania that can light up in thousands of different colors as well as a SmartThings motion sensor. The motion sensor is great – you can set it up near your front door and tell SmartThings to flash a color on the light bulbs when someone is coming and going out of the house. When purchasing a SmartThings kit, make sure that the recipient has an open Ethernet port on their WiFi router – the hub requires this in order to control devices.
2. Nest Secure, starter kit $499. The Nest Secure is a new player in the smart security market, and costs a bit more than systems by other companies, but you’re really getting your money’s worth here – especially if you already have Nest products in your home, like the Nest Cam. There’s some truly innovative features here, including the Tag keychain for arming/disarming the system, or temporarily disarming of the system if you want to open a window with a sensor for fresh air or opening the door quickly to let the dog do his business. If you know someone who is interested in getting a security system set up, the Nest Secure is a great way to go.
3. Awair Glow, $99. We’re big fans of knowing about the air you breathe, and the Awair is a great tool at an affordable price for monitoring air quality within your home. The best part is it doesn’t take up an outlet – you can plug any device into it and either use it as a regular plug, or you can even plug in non-smart devices and control them through the Glow. You can even do some programming using the Glow – if your humidity drops below a certain level, it can power on the humidifier you keep plugged in. It works with both Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, so it can give you verbal feedback about the air as well. It’s a great starting device for indoor air quality monitoring.

These products are great for people who have started dipping their toes into the smart home waters and want to unlock the full potential of their smart home. Stay tuned to see our favorite advanced smart home tech for the super savvy in your lives!